Then he realized what a lie it was, as all those house-sized shards, the boulders of ice flew through the air as if launched from Stefanos’s canons.
“No!” He and Kyrja shouted it together. He sent lava out after it, but not fast enough, and the cold air at that great distance began cooling it, hardening it, sending it shattering to the ground.
Kyrja lurched onto her knees, reaching up with both her hands, dragging his up too.
She didn’t speak. Didn’t shout. Didn’t have to. He could feel her magic pulsing out, even without having his own connection to what she could sense. He knew every ounce of her will was focused on stopping those ice-rocks from reaching Harroby, from pounding down and destroying the dome, killing thousands, ruining the lives of many beyond that. He shared her desperation to stop it.
Raf was in there, along with all the outcasts they’d sent to the dome for safety. Brother Gylfi. Raf’s family. Countless others.
Nik had no idea how to reach that ice, already so far away, with his heat. So he didn’t try. Instead, he focused on Kyrja, on giving to her anything he could, pouring his own connections into her and praying it didn’t just burn her alive.
Lightning flashed. Not from the sky, but from the cone of his mountain, through the ash clouds. And then…lower. Their raised hands acting like a lightning rod, it streaked down to meet them.
He expected a jolt. Death.
Instead, it was like her kiss on the trireme—heat that should have stopped his heart but instead fueled it. Not coming to them at all, he realized—flowing outfromthem, to the clouds, to that other lightning. Bluer, edged in purple, and streaking not toward the clouds of smoke and dust, but out across the plains, like the bolt that had taken down the block heading toward her minutes earlier.
Ice shattered. Fell. Rained down upon the barren plain, harmless.
And then…quiet. He braced for another attack from Isidor, but there was nothing. No movement. No fight.
They pulled each other to their feet, both of them focused now on the base of the mountain, where his mother and her father had been locked in that battle of ice and flame.
On the ground was a mound of white and silver that had once called itself king, unmoving, smoke still rising from him. And standing over the fallen traitor was a woman consumed by fire.
His breath eased out from his lungs, peace filling him. Not just any woman. Not even just “Elianne.” The one who’d given everything for him, and who would do it again, no matter the cost to herself.
Modur.With a kiss to Kyrja’s knuckles, he staggered to his feet and ran toward her, thanking the Giver it wasn’t too late to finally let her into his heart.
34
Daylight blinded Daemon as he emerged from Helviti, and he sent a glower up at the sky. Where were the perpetual clouds when he needed them? He stumbled a bit over a rock he’d sidestepped countless times in the last two weeks, directing his scowl down at it next.
“You look like a drunken sailor, King of Daemons.”
He hadn’t tasted alcohol in over a century and a half, but come to think of it, this headache trying to cleave his skull in two did feel like that time he and Thorin had broken into their uncle’s stash of aquavit, when they’d been old enough to know better and too young to care. He cast around, wincing, finally spotting Perla striding up the slope, dressed in her brown leathers. “You try holding the lava of an entire continent in check while your nephew builds a new volcano in about two minutes and see how you feel.”
“I have many talents,” she said, moving to his side and slipping an arm around his waist, “but alas. That’s not one of them.”
“I don’t need—”
“Shut up for once in your life, Dae, and accept some help.”
He tried not to lean onto her, but she wasn’t the wisp she looked like in those voluminous gowns she liked to wear. She was tall, solidly built, and with a well-placed shrug of her shoulder, she urged his arm up and around her neck.
Fire and ash, if it didn’t feel good to give her a bit of his weight. He let his eyes close for a second. “I feel like I could sleep for a decade.”
“I bet. But I think that had better wait. From what I could see, Elianne and Nik are in the lava flows, no doubt headed back here. Kyrja’s moving fast with Isidor’s body, letting the ice propel her—and Stefanos should arrive in the harbor around the same time. We have only an hour, I’d think, before they’re all here. What do you need? Food, drink?” Merciless creature that she was, Perla was all but dragging him down the slope, toward the palace. “The other Aflame emerged a few minutes ago and are meeting up with the Blessed on the High Council. But you need to address whoever was helping Isidor.”
“Ido?” Why wouldn’t that infernal sunshine go away? It was like a hammer on the chisel stuck in his skull. “You deal with it.”
“I’m only an ambassador, Daemon. I’ve already overstepped what I’m legally supposed to do in Fjordlandi about two hundred seventeen times in the last two weeks, give or take twelve.” She aimed them toward the doors.
He should have taken the time for a lava bath before coming out here to find the others. Though at least it would be dimmer inside. “Were you keeping count?”
“I was trying. If Isidor had somehow wrestled control back from Kyrja, I’d have to answer for each and every one of them.” She flashed him a cheeky smile. “Though I’m hoping the queen will grant me some diplomatic immunity. Put in a good word for me, First Seat of the High Council?”
He grunted. “I think I’ll tell her to kick you out and bar the harbor if you ever try to return.”
